Sun Belt Conference

After the 1990–91 basketball season, all members of the Sun Belt, except Western Kentucky, South Alabama, and Jacksonville, departed for other conferences.[9] On November 29, 2012, Florida Atlantic and Middle Tennessee State announced that they would also leave the Sun Belt for Conference USA.[10] The move for Florida Atlantic and MTSU was originally scheduled to take place in 2014; however, the two schools announced on January 28, 2013 that they would leave for Conference USA a year early, departing on July 1, 2013 with FIU and North Texas.Western Kentucky also accepted an invitation to join Conference USA on April 1, 2013, and departed from the Sun Belt on July 1, 2014.[11] These moves depleted the Sun Belt and made the need to expand their membership more urgent than ever, as the Sun Belt was left with ten full members and only eight members that sponsor football (the minimum number required for a conference to sponsor football at the FBS level) for the 2013 season.Appalachian State University accepted an invitation on March 27, 2013 to join the Sun Belt effective July 1, 2014.On October 22, The Action Network reported that Southern Miss had been accepted as a new Sun Belt member, with 2023 as the likely entry date.The report also stated that the Sun Belt would add three more members—the aforementioned Marshall and Old Dominion, plus James Madison University, a member of the FCS Colonial Athletic Association (CAA).[31] As for James Madison, its board met on October 29 to discuss a potential Sun Belt invitation, but its timeline was also affected by a Virginia state law that requires legislative approval for a four-year public school to move upward in athletic classification, including FCS to FBS.[26] Initial plans were for James Madison to compete as a de facto Sun Belt affiliate in sports other than football and men's soccer during the 2022–23 season.[38] Shortly thereafter, Marshall, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss announced that they planned to leave C-USA for the Sun Belt in July 2022.[40] On March 29, Conference USA agreed to let Marshall, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss move to the Sun Belt starting July 1, 2022.On June 6, the SBC presidents & chancellors approved adding two new women's sports, beach volleyball and swimming & diving, no later than the 2023–24 school year.[74][75] As of the current 2024–25 school year, the Sun Belt Conference sponsors championship competition in nine men's and eleven women's NCAA sanctioned sports.Coastal Carolina won its only D-I national title on the day before it officially joined the SBC, while representing the Big South Conference.[78] Since the 2018 NCAA Division I FBS season, the Sun Belt Conference has held a football championship game.Total expenses includes coach and staff salaries, scholarships, buildings and grounds, maintenance, utilities and rental fees, recruiting, team travel, equipment and uniforms, conference dues, and insurance.The following table shows institutional reporting to the United States Department of Education as shown on the DOE Equity in Athletics website for the 2021–22 academic year.[90] Four of the Sun Belt's member schools, Georgia State, Louisiana, Old Dominion and Southern Miss are doctorate-granting universities with "very high research activity," the highest classification given by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.